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Cricket is not India

On FirstPost.com Samanth Subramanian questions cricket's status as a metaphor for India, and the parallels drawn between happenings in Indian cricket and India as a nation

On FirstPost.com Samanth Subramanian questions cricket's status as a metaphor for India, and the parallels drawn between happenings in Indian cricket and India as a nation. A World Cup win does not mean the dawning of a new age, neither does the IPL signify economic progress, he writes.

Cricket-as-India has become the worst kind of metaphor. It is continuously interpreted to arrive at the same glib conclusions about a country that appears fated to be explained only in such shorthand. This endless metaphorizing is a part of what Amit Chaudhuri, writing in Outlook, called a new norm: “to see India not as a place, but as a concept you could experience, an idea making its way in the world.”